The New York Public Library is very important to me. It keeps me up on music legally, and in 2010, I heard more new artists than in any year since I was a college radio music director. You can use a library for whatever you like, and for me it has been a place to […]

Google Labs recently unveiled Ngrams, a chart that displays the number of times a term has appeared in literature digitized in the Google Books library. Based on their massive collection, the project has produced informative results for Freud, Darwin and other […]

Keith Richards, my hero. The songs, the guitars, the money, the girls, the cars, houses in the islands, pharmaceutical-quality drugs in death-defying quantities. Throughout, he keeps writing great songs. He lives a seemingly simple life, with simple chord sequences played better than anyone. To paraphrase Julia […]

Promotion for the Super Bowl has picked up this week, as the Black Eyed Peas were announced as Half Time performers. This is the first non-classic rock artist since Janet Jackson’s legendary “wardrobe malfunction.” Can you remember the last few off the top of your head? Springsteen, Prince, McCartney, Petty, Rolling Stones… oh, I forgot […]

In the past five years or so, as the landscape of the music business has changed, it has been interesting to see how classic artists like the Rolling Stones have responded to the new environment. The way people buy, consume and tell their friends about music has […]